This morning Diamond Comics Distributors, the industry’s leading distributor of the vast majority of comics periodicals to comic book stores, announced that they won’t be shipping comics on the week of December 28th, the first ‘skip week’ that I can recall in my 15 years in comics retail.
Diamond Skip Week Advisory: No New Product Shipments Week of DECEMBER 28
In consideration of UPS’ holiday delivery schedule, and in consultation with retailers and publishers, Diamond will not be shipping product to customers the week of December 28.“Most of our customers receive their shipments via 1-Day, 2-Day, or 3-Day UPS, with 3-Day shipments tendered to UPS on Friday,” explained Diamond Vice President of Operations Cindy Fournier. “With Christmas and New Year’s falling on Friday this year, we would not be able to tender product for 3-Day retailers until Monday, December 28. But because there will be no UPS service on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, product which could reach 1-Day and 2-Day retailers on December 30, would not reach our 3-Day UPS customers until January 4. In light of this, and based on conversations with our customers and suppliers, we agreed that a skip week was the fairest, most prudent way to proceed.”
That seems reasonable enough, I suppose, in a sort of Brave New World, break-someone’s-legs-if-they-run-too-fast kind of a way. Barring one week where we had massive shipping problems a few years back, this’ll be the first week without new comics in years and years. I wonder how customers are going to react?
You reading this, you’re probably a comics reader who hits the comic store once a week or so. What do you think?
– Chris
As a Wednesday regular, it’s not that big a deal. Although if the next week is a double-dose of the books I’d regularly buy over the course of two weeks, I might take the opportunity to drop a couple of titles if my list starts to get too expensive.
I’d have to guess this move is going to really suck for some shops, in terms of both bottom line and trying to rack two weeks worth of books on one Wednesday.
On the one side, that week between Christmas and New Years sucks for comic shops as they have at least a thursday or friday release day.
But in the end, all this means is that it makes New Years Eve a little more lonely without some comics to read..
I don’t work in a comic shop, but I do work in retail. The week following Christmas is a big and busy week. Giving customers a reason to not shop is going to hurt a lot of people.
I, personally, am going to lose my fucking shit, Chris.
LOSE… MY… FUCKING… SHIT. >:|
Be on the lookout for that. It’ll be great.
I think the Brave New World solution would be to send us all free drugs the week before so that we don’t care what day our shipments come one.
In a Harrison Bergeron future they’d hobble the fastest runners and force us to devote a quarter of the store to Pokemon Bobble Heads.
BIG shopping week, people with money to spend, more people on vacation and going shopping, and no new comics? Bad news. Small shops (like my LCS) need the weekly sales. To deny them new comics during a prime shopping week seems like a bad move to me.